Day 16, Rome, October 5th

Today was a pretty easy day, in part due to general exhaustion and in part due to Jupiter.

We had planned on waking up at 8 and making our way to the colosseum.  However, we woke up shortly before 8 to the sounds of one of the most torrential and intense thunderstorms I have ever seen.  The thunder was so frequent at first that I assumed it was the constant sound of cars or machinery.  We checked the weather.  Strong thunderstorm all day, then rain for the rest of the week.

We immediately knew we couldn't go out in this, but seized upon the chance to sleep in!  We slept until about 10:30, then got up.  Our B&B guy made us an excellent b-fast: bread, prosciutto, cheese, fruit, cereal, milk, tea, coffee, etc...

The rain died down to a drizzle, and we decided to head out anyway.  We got to the colosseum, which was very interesting. They had trap doors and everything to bring bears and trees up from the floor!  Interesting stuff, though the arena itself was a bit small.

Against all prediction it stopped raining at this point, and there were only a few showers throughout the day.  Walked around the Palantine and forum, which were more ruined than I expected.  A lot of signs saying "See that lump of dirt?  That used to be something!"

I was 5 by this point and we were exhausted.  So we got pizza and headed home!

Sat around the B&B for a while reading. Finished Ender's game again.  Then went on an adventure to go find a Laundromat!  Was successful!  Then went on an adventure to go find a bookstore in English!  Was unsuccessful!  Reiter is reading Dracula on my nook and I'm too nice to rake it away from him, so I'm stuck playing phone games for the night.

Came back home, littered around, and am now going to sleep!

P.S. Reiter has 15 bug bites.  I have one or two.  Ideally, they are from mosquitoes, not bed bugs.

Good night!